no title

Students build wheelchair for three-legged dog

View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoEAMON QUEENEY | DISPATCH PHOTOSAbove: Susan Montgomery, right, along with Sean Noel, left, and Chloe Shevlin coax Jimmy to try his wheelchair.
Left: Jimmy, who only has three legs, initially was too spooked to try out the wheelchair designed by Hilliard Davidson students.

More Articles

Hilliard Davidson High School students are helping Jimmy, a three-legged cockapoo, step a little
livelier.

But when the engineering students strapped Jimmy into a wheelchair they spent the past school
year designing, the dog didn’t feel much like walking.

“He’s scared,” said Susan Montgomery, Jimmy’s owner and a teacher at Hilliard’s Norwich
Elementary, where Jimmy is the unofficial mascot.

In a demonstration in front of Montgomery’s fourth- and fifth-graders last week, Jimmy began
panting heavily as Hilliard Davidson seniors Chloe Shevlin, Blake Roberts and Sean Noel harnessed
him to a four-wheeled cart made of PVC pipes. The students tried to get him to step forward. Jimmy
took a few steps back.

“It will take him a little while to get used to it because he is used to freedom, but I think it
will be helpful,” Montgomery said. “I’m so proud of (the high-school students) for the work they’ve
done on this.”

Shevlin heard about Jimmy from her younger brother. She proposed helping the dog in a yearlong
project in her engineering, design and development class.

“When I was thinking about what I wanted to do for this project, I thought, ‘How cool would it
be if we could make this new innovative wheelchair for Jimmy that is different from all the other
wheelchairs in the market?’ ” said Shevlin, who is interested in working with prosthetics and
biomedical engineering.

Jimmy’s right front leg was amputated when he has 4 months old after his previous owner yanked
his paw and left his dislocated elbow and broken leg untreated. Now, Jimmy’s left wrist is
beginning to twist and he’s starting to experience arthritis in his remaining front leg.

“Sixty percent of a dog’s weight is in the front, and he’s absorbing all of his weight on one
leg,” Montgomery said.

She said Jimmy eventually would need a wheelchair and was concerned when she discovered that one
can cost up to $600. She was surprised when Shevlin emailed her about her project.

“I thought, ‘Wow, how touching she would want to do something like this,’ ” she said.

Shevlin teamed up with Roberts and Noel to create a wheelchair that serves Jimmy’s needs,
including a sling to help ease the pressure on his front paw.

The group studied dog-wheelchair companies and sought advice from a veterinarian at MedVet
Medical and Cancer Center for Pets, asking about benefits and flaws in existing products. They
connected with a bioengineer at the University of Louisville, who helped develop a wheelchair
design for paraplegic dogs using items commonly found at a hardware store. They also appealed to
Norwich students for help in purchasing parts. In two weeks, they raised about $650.

Their first model turned out to be 5 inches too tall. They reworked their prototype, which they
presented to Montgomery and her class last week.

The blue wheelchair will serve as a temporary model. Another team of Hilliard Davidson students
will pick up next year where Shevlin,

Roberts and Noel left off, using aluminum pipes and spherical wheels for a lighter and
more-mobile wheelchair.

“This project has changed my life,” Shevlin said. “Now I know for a fact that I want to go into
biomedical engineering. I don’t know what yet, but it reinforced that fact.”